


Harry Potter and the Maudlin Merman

by FleetofShippyShips



Series: Harry Potter and the Maudlin Merman [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (cursed that way), Creature Fic, Don't copy to another site, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, M/M, Merman Draco, Merpeople, Open Ending, Post-Hogwarts, Professor Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 14:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18741331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleetofShippyShips/pseuds/FleetofShippyShips
Summary: At some point after the war, Draco Malfoy was cursed and dumped in the lake at Hogwarts.





	Harry Potter and the Maudlin Merman

It was so cloudy that at first, Harry forgot it was a full moon. Then the clouds cleared.

“You really must be loving this,” Draco said, the words escaping him like a sigh. He was resting his head on folded arms at the end of the jetty.

Harry was having a hard time not looking at him. Even if he’d seen him so many times now, the full moon changed everything. Draco’s skin was _glowing_. There was a faint iridescence to his skin when he moved, Harry had noticed that before, it was impossible not to, but under the light of the full moon he was emitting a glow. It was pale blue and faint, but it caught Harry’s eye the moment the clouds cleared from in front of the moon.

“What?” he finally asked gruffly, forcing his eyes away to look out over the lake. The night was mostly still, just the slightest breeze, so only the faintest sound of water lapping at the jetty. It was his favourite kind of evening to spend by the lake. It was impossible for the calm not to bleed into him until it took over and forced the stress away.

Draco groaned and slapped the jetty hard with one hand. The sound startled Harry so badly and almost fell off the edge. The calmness was disturbed as his legs jerked and splashed water everywhere.

“Why do you keep coming down here?” Draco asked angrily, pushing away from the jetty until he was a few feet away, just his shoulders and head exposed above the water. “Don’t war heroes have better things to do?”

A heavy weight settled in Harry’s stomach.  _War hero_. He hated those words. He should be used to them by now, they followed him everywhere, but they still made him sick to his stomach. Even though it would have been worse if he’d become an Auror like he’d once planned, once started training for, he sometimes doubted his own sanity for returning to teach at Hogwarts. No one idolised another person like children did.

And no one idolised him less than Draco did.

“Well?” Draco demanded when Harry didn’t respond.

Harry shrugged his shoulders, attention captured by the way the water caught and reflected the glow emanating from Draco’s skin. Even if the only visible change to his upper body were gills at his neck, the iridescence of his skin, and some faint webbing between his fingers, he looked otherworldly. No wonder he was perpetually pissed off. It really was the perfect revenge for a Malfoy. Even with all their history, Harry had wanted to hunt down the person who’d cursed him and wring their neck the moment he’d found out.

Who did that to another person? Even Draco didn’t deserve that.

A splash of water hitting his face startled him again, and he wobbled dangerously on the edge of the jetty.

“I’m talking to you, arsehole!” Draco seethed. “If you’re going to keep coming down here and forcing your company on me, at least talk back! Or does teaching use all the brainpower in that tiny little brain of yours? Nothing left at the end of the day?”

Harry wiped at his face with one hand and tried not to rise to the bait. Being dumped in the lake at Hogwarts ensured Draco didn’t get to see many people. The rumours among the students at least confirmed none of them had actually seen him. He was lonely. Of course he was grumpy. It wasn’t like Harry went there because he was charming company anyway.

“Well I don’t come down here for peace and quiet,” he muttered anyway.

He did, of course. He’d started that first day as a professor, overwhelmed and doubting everything. Stumbling across Draco’s jetty was an accident. He hadn’t even seen him that day, or more likely, Draco had hidden if he had been around. But the jetty was around a bend in the shore, half into the Forbidden Forest and not easy for students to get to without breaking too many rules.

It was exactly what he’d been looking for. Draco’s presence, grouchy though he was, had never really changed that like it should have.

The water rippled as Draco moved closer. His movements were smooth, like he might have always been that way. It made Harry itch to know just how long he’d been cursed. He’d gone abroad long before he’d been officially reported as missing. Two years after that Harry had finally quit Auror training and taken a teaching post, and by that point the details of the curse had already been leaked.

Maybe Draco had never gone abroad. Maybe he’d been cursed that whole time and his mother had tried to keep it a secret. That seemed like a Malfoy thing to do.

With a cautiousness that reminded Harry for a wild animal approaching food near a person, inching closer and closer, stopping and checking for threats, Draco reached the edge of the jetty and reached for the tea Harry had brought him.

Harry wished he would have kept ignoring it like he had been from the moment Harry had set it down on the jetty. His own gesture made Harry flush with some uncomfortable feeling even now, watching Draco reach over the age-worn planks for a pristine teacup. It was still steaming, under a heat-stasis charm. The wisps of steam were almost like the glow escaping Draco’s skin.

Harry found himself transfixed by the way Draco’s skin looked while he moved. The colours constantly shifting, so faintly it was almost imperceptible.

“Well, you brought tea, so I suppose I can tolerate what an otherwise uncultured, rude arsehole you are,” Draco muttered, pushing away from the jetty again with one hand.

He drifted away a little and then stilled, holding the teacup easily above the water and taking a sip, eyes on Harry with a wariness that almost made it seem like he expected Harry to take it back. To claim the tea had never been meant for Draco even though he’d brought two cups with him.

To stop himself from asking questions that would probably have Draco swimming off in a fury, Harry picked up his own cup and took a large gulp.

What the hell _was_ he doing? Why did he go down to Draco’s jetty so often? It wasn’t like they got along. Draco had only just stopped drenching him with water every time he found him sitting at the end of the jetty.

Ron would probably say something about Harry seeking out one of the few people who didn’t treat him like a hero. He wouldn’t be wrong. Draco reminded him of his failings more than any of the good he’d done.

It was grounding in a tragic, depressing sort of way.

And they did talk, after Draco was done splashing him like a grumpy child.

“I know Hagrid brings you food,” he said, feeling even more awkward seeing the expression on Draco’s face while he drank his tea. “I didn’t think he’d think past the necessities.”

“Tea _is_ a necessity, you oaf,” Draco muttered, drifting a little closer, the ripples in the water shimmering with the reflection of light emanating from his skin.

Like the last few times he’d visited the jetty, Harry’s hands trembled with the urge to reach out and touch. To see if that iridescence of his skin came with a texture unlike skin. To see if the patchiness around his gills felt like the scales it looked like.

It was so inappropriate he usually returned to the castle the moment he had those thoughts. Draco would murder him if he knew. Anything that highlighted what he was now was probably the greatest crime imaginable to him.

But then again, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d wanted to run his hands through Draco’s hair. That urge had dogged him for years. It wasn’t only about what Draco was now, and maybe if he’d realised that sooner he’d have stopped his visits before it got out of hand.

No good could come of any of this, and yet he couldn’t stop coming down to the jetty to visit him.

Before Harry even realised, Draco was at the edge of the jetty again, pushing himself up and reaching over to put the teacup back by the teapot. The movement revealed a flash of iridescent blue scales before Draco slid back into the water.

“What happens if you stay out of the water for a while?” he found himself asking, a question finally bubbling forth after months of suppressing them. “Does your skin dry out? Does your...your...”

The look Draco gave him made Harry’s throat dry up in an instant, and he lost the rest of his words. Draco would probably reach up and drag Harry down to drown him if he mentioned his tail.

“What, no one’s gone blabbing about all the details yet?” Draco asked spitefully. “I thought freaks like me made the front page news with some regularity.”

Harry swallowed down an uncomfortable lump in his throat. He wasn’t sure what was worse, that for a week the news had been all about Draco, or that for over a year afterwards there had been nothing at all. The world had already forgotten him.

“If anything in this lake is freakish, it’s the other merpeople,” Harry mumbled awkwardly. “You look downright beautiful next to them.”

Heat flooded Harry’s face, and he wished for a moment that Draco really would drown him. Instead, Draco rested his arms on the edge of the jetty again and looked up at him with one raised eyebrow.

His expressions were all the same, even if not much else was. Harry knew that scornful eyebrow well from years of Draco’s teasing.

“Shut up,” he muttered. “I meant they’re ugly.”

Draco snorted softly. “And that I’m beautiful. If you think I’m ever letting you forget you said that, you don’t know me at all.”

Harry looked away and had to put his cup down and grip the edge of the jetty to stop himself from reaching out. Draco was closer to him than before. His folded arms so close his elbow was almost touching the outside of Harry’s thigh.

Up close, he could see individual scales around the edges of the gills on Draco’s neck. They lay completely flat, almost seamless. They were really only visible because of the scales and slight shade of iridescent blue around them.

“How do you breathe out of water for so long?”

Another question, like the first might have chipped a hole in the wall he had holding them back. He was courting danger tonight. He’d blame the full moon if anyone asked.

“Same way you do,” Draco said, surprising him. He lifted a hand and traced the line of one gill, his expression one of distaste. “These only do something when I’m under water.”

Harry’s fingertips itched and he dug them harder into the old wood of the jetty. “I couldn’t breathe out of the water with gillyweed,” he murmured.

Draco dropped his head onto his forearms again and sighed. “I suppose this was inevitable. At least you brought tea. Pansy and Blaise brought nothing but their questions.”

A scowl formed on Harry’s face before he could stop it. He still remembered how grouchy Draco had been after their visit to the grounds. He hadn’t come to talk to Harry for three weeks, even though Harry had gone down to the jetty almost every evening.

“Don’t get all indignant on my behalf, you haven’t earned the right,” Draco muttered. “They can’t exactly visit often when access to the grounds is restricted to students and professors. You know as well as I do that getting permission to visit is exceedingly difficult unless you’re a war hero or war hero-adjacent. That was never my crowd.”

“I’m not indignant,” Harry huffed, folding his arms.

“If you lie to me again I’m going to pull you in here with me,” Draco snorted, pulling at a splinter of wood in one of the planks. He kept tugging at it in silence for a while before giving up.

Harry’s eyes wandered again, a cloud passed in front of the moon and the glow disappeared from Draco’s skin. The light from Harry’s wand, propped up by the teapot, didn’t create the same effect. Draco turned and met Harry’s eyes until the cloud passed, then he looked away and his upper body went tense.

“Why do you keep coming here?” he asked again. “Is it that satisfying then? Seeing me like this? Not freakish enough, I have to glow too...”

With an angry sound, he pushed away from the jetty again.

Harry reached out before thinking, catching his wrist. A second later, he was underwater. For a moment he didn’t react, then he thrashed about, his sense of up and down completely gone. The lake was dark, he almost couldn’t tell he had his eyes open until he saw the glow.

The moonlight penetrated the water just enough that Draco’s whole body was glowing, and Harry could see it all through the water.

The struggle left him as he took it in, as he finally saw all of Draco’s new form.

Then he was wrenched towards the surface.

“You bloody stupid oaf!” Draco spat.

Another body collided with Harry’s underwater and his mind skittered around the fact. Draco’s body was half tail. He’d just seen it, glowing iridescent blue under the water, each ripple of movement displaying a multitude of shades of blue.

Hard wood smacked Harry out of his stupor as Draco dragged him right up against the end of the jetty. He slung an arm over the edge to hold himself up but hardly needed to. Draco did the same, but he still had one arm around Harry’s body, holding him up easily.

“Can you even swim when you’re not jumped up on gillyweed?” Draco hissed. “I don’t need people coming after me with pitchforks because the bloody Chosen One drowned on my watch!”

Harry pushed his hair out of his eyes, forgot about his glasses, then nearly lost them in the lake before tossing them onto the jetty. A sharp crack made him wince, but he didn’t look away from Draco.

This was the closest they’d been in all the times Harry had visited his jetty.

“I don’t come down here because I get a kick out of seeing what happened to you,” he said quietly, searching Draco’s expression for any hint he might try to bolt again. “Do you really think I’m that kind of person?”

Draco looked away. “Of course not. Perfect Potter would never,” he muttered.

Harry looked down. The glow of Draco’s tail was visible through the water. It had been all night, a formless blue haze, but now that he’d seen it underwater...

“I’m up here, Neanderthal.”

“Sorry,” Harry said reflexively as he jerked his head back up. If he didn’t manage to control his urge to look and touch, Draco was going to swim away and who knew how long he’d stay gone before letting Harry see him again. It would be like those weeks after Blaise and Pansy’s visit all over again. The first time Harry had really missed him, and the first time he’d realised coming out to the lake had become more about Draco and less about just getting away from the hero worshipping kids in the castle.

“Well you probably stare less than anyone else would so I suppose I should forgive you,” Draco said, his face twisting in a familiar look of disgust. “I would stare too. Probably point and laugh.”

Harry bit his lip hard. No good would come from saying what was on his mind. He’d probably find himself promptly drowned. Or never talked to again. He’d miss their odd exchanges. No one else was so welcoming and dismissive of him at the same time.

“And at least I brought you tea,” he managed to say.

Draco stared at him. Harry’s face became hot from the urge to hold everything back. Words and touch. Draco was finally within reach, he could finally know what that skin felt like if he only reached out, but the moment he did he’d ruin everything.

“At least you brought me tea,” Draco finally echoed. “That was surprisingly thoughtful.”

“For someone with such a tiny brain?” Harry rolled his eyes and grinned at him. Giving Draco an opening to tease him would make everything level out again. Maybe it would calm the fluttery beating of his heart.

Draco stared at him, then let go of him.

If Harry hadn’t already been propped up on the jetty by one arm, he probably would have sunk like a stone. Maybe it really had been the gillyweed. He should probably learn how to swim.

“I suppose I owe you something now?” Draco said, smoothing a hand through his hair.

Harry’s stomach did something acrobatic and uncomfortable. “No. You don’t owe me anything.”

“No one does anything without expecting something in return,” Draco countered.

Harry bit back a response about Slytherin mindsets.

“Consider it thanks then,” he said, thinking fast. “For sharing your jetty with me.”

“ _My_ jetty?” Draco stared at him like he’d gone mad.

Harry shrugged as best he could without losing his precarious position. “You’re always here.”

The staring was making it harder for Harry not to blurt out something stupid. Like how beautiful Draco’s skin was. Or how breathtaking his tail had looked under water. Or how sometimes talking to Draco, even if only about mundane and awkward things, was the only thing he felt kept him sane when the students’ hero worship got too much to bear. Or how getting splashed with water when Draco was in one of his moods was actually too often the highlight of his day. Or maybe that was more about the way Draco would grin at him afterwards.

“ _You’re_ always here,” Draco countered. “More interesting than the rest of the lake. It does get so dull after a while.”

Harry whistled. “A compliment? From you? Whatever ever did I do to deserve such an honour?”

Draco splashed him.

With a laugh, Harry wiped the water out of his eyes and grinned at him. That was better than worrying Draco might dive down to the depths at any moment, never to be seen again.

“You’re such an _idiot_ ,” Draco hissed.

“You’re beautiful,” Harry blurted out.

Draco stared at him. “You’re not wearing your glasses, idiot. You’re blind.”

“Not that blind,” Harry muttered.

“Stop,” Draco breathed, staring at him with such intensity it made Harry shiver.

“Stop what?” Harry asked, barely breathing.

“Stop _lying_ to me.”

Harry swallowed against a dry throat. Draco was too close for this conversation. “I’m not.”

Draco exhaled slowly, then leaned in. Harry’s breath got lost somewhere in his chest when their lips met. It was soft, hesitant almost. More like a ghost of a kiss, and over before it really began. Then Draco closed is eyes and rested his forehead against Harry’s.

“I know,” he breathed.

The moment lingered for only a few seconds, then Harry was spluttering through a face full of water and Draco was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> I so desperately wanted to write something for Mermay, this wasn't quite what I'd planned when I started but here we are and I like it anyway haha
> 
> And yes, that's the ending, please don't ask me to write more. I like open endings and I tagged it sooooo why are you reading it if you don't like them? 🤷
> 
> Thanks to DeWitty1 for the last minute read through for typos and shit =) and another group of people for egging me on through discord while I was writing, you know who you are =)
> 
> caroll-in/herman_the_moth drew some gorgeous art of them which you can find [here](https://caroll-in.tumblr.com/post/185711693974/i-had-originally-planned-to-have-it-ready-for), definitely check it out!!


End file.
